


veritatem fratribus testari

by AlexiaBlackbriar13



Series: ubi amor, ibi dolor [2]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Depression, Discovery of Self-Harm, Discussing of Cutting, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Excessive Exercise, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Harm, discussion of suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-10
Updated: 2017-02-10
Packaged: 2018-09-23 08:50:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9648680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexiaBlackbriar13/pseuds/AlexiaBlackbriar13
Summary: Set in a slightly canon-divergent S1. The five times Oliver is caught self-harming and the one time he isn’t.2: Tommy Merlyn





	

**Author's Note:**

> "veritatem fratribus testari" - "to bear witness to the truth in brotherhood".
> 
>  
> 
> Second part of the Oliver self-harming and being discovered fic. Trigger Warnings in the tags.

* * *

Oliver worked out. Excessively.

He made his excuses for it by telling himself that it was training so he would be safer in the field. Train hard, fight easy, that was what he had been taught over the five years he was away, and he repeated that mantra in his head every time he ran seven laps around the Queen mansion’s grounds until his muscles burnt and his eyesight was blurry, every time he worked out for hours on the salmon ladder or pounded a training dummy until he was seeing stars and he physically couldn’t stand without support.

But working out _helped_.

As well as training him to be the Hood, it also helped him zone out and compartmentalise. It gave him time to think about everything he had done and shove it into boxes in the corners of his mind; he evaluated his past mistakes, analysed his errors, and made solutions, to make sure he would never make those mistakes and errors again. Working out gave him time to think, to focus on his body and his strengths and weaknesses.

Tommy was due to come around one morning for brunch; Moira and Thea thoroughly enjoyed watching the two boys interact again (although in Moira’s case, she often disapproved of their subject matter) so they often invited Tommy around for meals, or just to come and hang out at the mansion, just like he had done when he was a kid. Oliver woke up from his position sleeping on the floor just before dawn and, his head reeling from his latest nightmare, he pulled on his running gear and trainers and headed outside.

After five rounds of the grounds, he was exhausted, hungry and thirsty, but he pushed himself to keep going. He managed to start another lap of the property before he really began to struggle. His chest heaved and his heart was thudding almost painfully within his chest, muscles burning. But he continued running, and completed that lap, then another, before he began his eighth.

Oliver was passing by the front drive when his head whipped around at the sound of crunching gravel. Tommy was driving his Mercedes up the driveway to park at the most insane speed and it almost made Oliver smile. He slowed down to a brisk jog, his legs aching, to watch his best friend as Tommy clambered out of the car, glancing around as he stretched his arms out from being cramped. Tommy spotted him and a grin broke out over his face as he raised his arm in a wave.

“Hey, man, are you going for a run?” Tommy called teasingly as Oliver approached him. “Aw, you could have dropped me a text and we could have gone running together, it would have been -”

Oliver had just reached Tommy and stopped, pulling out his fake Ollie Queen grin, but then the world tipped sideways, his vision went fuzzy, his ears started ringing and he staggered. Luckily, Tommy had noticed that he seemed disorientated because he leapt forwards and caught him under the shoulder, stopping him from collapsing to the ground. His pulse was thrumming in his ears and there was a strange ringing noise that made the archer shake his head in confusion, but that moment just made his head hurt more, and he slumped, eyes squeezed shut.

“Jesus, Oliver, you okay?” he asked worriedly. Realising Oliver was still a little wobbly on his feet, he helped him over to a low-sitting wall that ran around the front porch and aided him in sitting down, making sure the archer wasn’t going to fall off before he observed Oliver carefully. “Man, you do _not_ look good.”

“I’m fine,” Oliver replied, shaking his head slightly to try and clear it, lifting a hand up to his head to rub his throbbing temple. Everything was blurry and he could hardly see. His blood sugar levels were probably down, since he hadn’t eaten since lunch yesterday, and because of the way he’d been sweating, he was dehydrated as well. Everything hurt.

Tommy caught his hand and shot him an anxious look, pulling his hand down so Oliver could look at it. The archer winced; his hand was trembling. “How much running have you done this morning?” Tommy asked slowly, taking in Oliver’s sweat-soaked shirt and shorts and practically worn-out trainers.

It was a massive effort, but Oliver managed to shrug. “Not exactly sure,” he got out, keeping his voice level and impassive. “Doesn’t matter anyway.”

“Yeah, it does,” Tommy argued, grabbing Oliver’s chin from where it had dipped down, lifting his friend’s head so he could look him in the eyes. When the archer flinched away, his best friend looked even more worried. “It matters a lot if you’re running so much you’re practically passing out. And don’t give me that ‘not exactly sure’ crap, you _know_ how much you’ve run, you just don’t want to tell me because the answer is probably gonna be a bad one.” He took a deep breath, steadying his voice, which had slowly been getting louder as he continued talking. “So let me ask again, Oliver. How much running have you done this morning? A lap of the property? Two?”

“Seven,” Oliver confessed. “And a half?”

“Oh my god,” Tommy turned away in his incredulity, running his hands through his dark hair. When he turned back around, he looked shocked but also maybe a little horrified. “Basically eight laps around these grounds, just this morning? One lap around must be around four miles, so that means -” He paled. “You ran about thirty miles, _just this morning_. That’s - that’s more than a marathon.”

“S’what I usually run,” he muttered in reply, shrinking in on himself.

Narrowing his eyes at him, Tommy poked his shoulder suspiciously, asking, “When did you last eat?”

He shook his head.

“ _Oliver._ When did you last eat?”

“Yesterday at lunch,” he finally responded, voice quiet.

“Have you had anything to drink since you started running?”

“... No.”

“Shit, man, are you trying to kill yourself?”

Oliver’s head snapped up and not being able to rein his emotions in due to his exhaustion and muddled mind, he growled, “What, did Thea tell you about what happened? God, Tommy, I wasn’t trying to _kill myself_ , okay, it’s just a coping technique, and I go running all the time, this really isn’t -”

“Wait, what,” Tommy interrupted, sounding furious, waving his hands to cut Oliver off. “Did Thea tell me about ‘what happened’? ‘Just a coping technique’? Jesus Christ, Oliver, have you been _self-harming?_ Is that what you just admitted? Have you been freaking _self-harming_ , Oliver?!” At the archer’s terrified silence, Tommy erupted in anger. “Oh my god, _you idiot!_ You have been! We literally _just_ got you back from the dead and then you go and do something like _that!?_ I mean, seriously, Oliver?”

“It wasn’t bad, alright?” Oliver snapped, lashing out to whack one of Tommy’s flailing arms away from his face and glaring at his friend.

“You were self-harming! It IS that bad!” His friend was furious, and Oliver found himself flinching away from his angry movements instinctively. “What have you been doing?” he demanded.

“I don’t -”

“Oliver Jonas Queen, _what_ have you been doing to yourself? How have you been self-harming?” His best friend caught his wrist to tug on his arm when Oliver turned away and refused to answer him, gritting his teeth, and the archer pretty much jumped out of his skin, yanking his arm away and cradling it to his chest. “Answer me, Oliver!”

He hated how desperate he sounded. “Tommy, look, it wasn’t that bad, okay? It’s nothing to get all worked up over, it was just a few cuts -”

“ _Just a few cuts_?” Tommy shouted, his eyes ablaze.

Something inside of Oliver broke fundamentally and he said, voice shaking and curling in on himself, “Stop looking at me like that!”

“Like what?!”

“Like I’m - I’m some sort of criminal for having emotions that I can’t -” He cut himself off, taking a few shuddering breaths in an attempt to calm himself down. He was itching to grab a blade again, just to feel pain so he didn’t have to feel this fear and confusion and crippling guilt. “ - Emotions that I can’t control, please,” he finally finished in a whisper.

Tommy bit his lip, stepping back slightly, but the fury within his gaze was still evident. “I’m not looking at you like that.”

“You’re acting all disappointed in me like this is something that I -” the archer lashed back at him, trying to stand up, but immediately feeling dizzy again, and falling back onto the wall with a thump and a grunt. “You don’t understand - this is the only way that I can - I can’t restrain myself from doing this to myself, not when _I want to, Tommy!_ ” 

There was a beat of frigid silence, in which the two men stared at each other, Tommy’s expression one of immense sadness whilst Oliver wrapped his arms around himself, swallowing. Finally, Tommy deflated and sat down heavily beside Oliver on the wall, his head in his hands, groaning. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t get angry at you. I shouldn’t have shouted. It’s just… God, I am such a bad best friend… I didn’t even notice you were self-harming.”

“You weren’t meant to,” Oliver muttered, shaking his head. “Nobody was meant to.”

“So what’s your poison?” Tommy questioned, eyes soft now. “C’mon, man, you know about mine. Emotional and minor physical child abuse that resulted in acute depression and reckless behaviour. What’s yours?”

“Acute chronic PTSD, anxiety and depression,” he replied, voice dead as he recited the diagnoses that had been included in his ARGUS employee file. “Persistent intrusive and self-destructive thoughts and tendencies. Suspected paranoia. Caused by severe psychological and physical trauma.”

He’d never seen his best friend look so astonished before. “Holy shit,” Tommy whispered.

“I know,” he all he can respond.

“Do - does your family know?”

“They have to know about the PTSD and depression by now,” Oliver sighs, running his trembling fingers through his hair. “And the self-destructive tendencies. None of the rest of it though.” Shooting Tommy a serious look, he adds, “And I don’t plan to tell them, either. If I find out you’ve talked to them about this out of turn…”

“Don’t finish that,” his best friend grimaces. “I’m not gonna snitch on you, buddy. I just wish that you’d - I dunno, that you’d mentioned it. I know you haven’t really had the time and there hasn’t been a good moment but - that’s the sort of thing a best friend knows, Oliver. That’s the sort of thing you _tell_ your best friend.”

“I’m sorry,” Oliver said, not knowing what else to say. “I’m sorry, Tommy.”

“No. You don’t need to apologise. You probably feel crappy anyway; everybody's been pressuring you since you got back and you’ve got issues you’re struggling to sort out.” Tommy patted him gently on his shoulder, obviously trying not to spook him too much. “Wait here.” He got up to fetch a bottle of water and cereal bar out of the foot well of his Mercedes, and when he handed them over to Oliver, he ordered, “Drink all of it. And you’re not standing ‘til you eat that thing.”

The water was cool so it soothed his parched throat and the food settled his stomach. Tommy took back the empty plastic bottle and put it down on the floor, returning to his position seated next to him. They stayed there in the morning sun in comfortable silence for a few minutes, watching birds fly over the trees and the wind rustle leaves.

“You called the cutting a ‘coping technique’? What did you mean?” his best friend asked quietly.

Oliver looked down at his hands, which were no longer shaking, he was glad to see. “When Mom, Walter and Thea caught me cutting, they took away all the weapons I had to make me feel secure in my room,” he said flatly. “And they can’t seem to understand that the pain - I need it, it _anchors_ me to home. Some days it’s like I just… some days my mind just goes back to the island and I can’t control the memories. The pain gives me _control_.”

Tommy inhaled and rubbed his face. “And your family took that control away. So this running thing it’s - it’s a way for you to get back in control?”

“Running just lets me… zone out,” Oliver told him. “Running is physical, and it gives me time to either stop thinking if I want to or just… come apart from my thoughts and sort them out. It works almost as well as pain, allowing me to step back from emotions but only if I run for a long time, so much so that I have to stop eventually because I wear out my new trainers.”

“Jesus,” Tommy murmured, still, it seemed, in a state of shock. “Give me your phone,” Tommy suddenly said.

Oliver handed it over wordlessly, pulling it out from where it was being stored in the pocket of his running shorts. “I don’t exactly know how to use it,” he murmured. “Five years ago there were flip phones and buttons. This touch screen stuff -”

“Ask Walter to get you in touch with an IT specialist at QC or something,” Tommy ploughed on, tapping on Oliver’s phone for a moment before handing it back. “There. My number’s speed dial two now. Figured you’d want to keep your bodyguard as speed dial one. Now if you ever feel the need to cut, or run until you pass out, you call me first, okay? I’ll come over, I’ll sit with you - hell, I’ll even run with you if that’s what you need.”

A small smile broke out over Oliver’s face as he chuckled weakly. “You hate running, Tommy.”

“Yeah, I know,” Tommy nodded, smirking. “That just means we’ll be doing a lot less distance that you usually do, which in your case, will be a good thing.” His face grew serious. “I don’t want you to go running alone anymore. Running alone doesn’t set you any limits. You’ll end up collapsing eventually. Really, I mean it, Ollie. You’ll end up in the hospital. I literally just got my best friend back, and I’m not losing him again. I’m not going pressure you to stop, or force you to go to therapy like I guess your family are trying to, but I promise, I _will_ be here for you, if you ever need it. I can’t repeat enough the fact that you’re _not_ alone anymore.”

“Thanks, Tommy,” Oliver bit out, because he was shocked Tommy was actually being so serious and supportive. His best friend had clearly matured while he had been away.

“I think you need to get it into your head, man,” Tommy smiled. “All of us, we love you, a lot. You’re like a brother to me. You always will be.”

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. Please leave kudos and comment.


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